You’ve Got A Fiend In Me: Jeff Strand’s Dweller

While there isn’t much at the box office driving horror fans to beat the heat in their local theaters this summer, there are plenty of killer reads to keep you entertained poolside, or if you’re like me, lakeside. My family has a long standing tradition of a week long camping trip every summer without fail. Everyone spends almost the entire week basking in the shade to catch up on their reading. Of course being the horror hound I always bring books of the macabre variety and this summer I am catching up on all the good reads I missed earlier in the year. One such book is Dweller by Jeff Strand. If it wasn’t for a fellow brother-in-horror, I would have missed Strand altogether, but luckily in the horror community there is a lot of love to share and no one wants to see their fellow fiends miss out on the good stuff. If you too missed Strand the first time around, never fear, there is no time like the present to get acquainted.

 Meet Dweller’s Toby Floren, a typical 8 year old boy seeking adventure and friendship. A social outcast, Toby seeks refuge in the forest and makes a gruesome discovery; a monster dwells in these woods! Forced to run from the beast for fear of being eaten, it isn’t until several years later that Toby reconnects with the monster from his past. But this time Toby doesn’t run away. This time Toby makes friends with the gnarly creature and names him Owen, the moniker of a lost childhood friend and Toby’s last chance for normalcy. Toby can finally have a confidant and perhaps a deadly ally against his enemies. What follows is the epic journey of boy and pet monster, part childhood fantasy, but always deadly serious.

 Toby struggles to balance individual conscience while maintaining allegiance to his friend. Owen is the only friend Toby has ever known, so when the opportunity for human friendship, and even romance, present itself Toby finds that he can’t have both and still remain loyal to his lifelong companion. Intimately twisted into the tangles of this relationship the final act honestly brought me to tears. Perhaps you won’t need to keep the tissue close at hand, but make no mistake Strand will challenge even the most emotionally frigid to warm up to these tragic characters along with enough blood-soaked pages to whet any gore-hound’s palate.

I encourage you to join the Strand army in the fight against sweltering summer heat and boredom and pick up Dweller which is available at any major bookstore. If you end up loving this novel as much as I did get the beautiful hardcover edition at Dark Regions Press (pictured above). Sign up for their newsletter and you can receive notification for fantastic discounts and deals for sci-fi, horror, and fantasy reads. Keep your eyes peeled for his next novel WOLF HUNT due out in December 2010. Visit Jeff Strand at www.jeffstrand.wordpress.com to get updates on his current projects, find out about previous releases and read his humorous blurbs.